It's funny. I was so intrigued with the notion that they found a Peter Cushing look alike, I assumed the uncanniness was in part makeup. I knew the hair was fake, but I had no idea he was CGI. I thought he was weird, but I thought he was a person. Now that I know he was CGI, I'll see it more plainly next time.

I thought Vader's action scene was lackluster. He wasn't scary. He should have been much more terrible, IMVHO. Maybe the secret to making him scarier is to keep him off of the front line... leave that to the viewer's imagination.

bedstuy Wrote:mocking a pair of $500 jeans is a form of class warfare... why do you hate my social status?

First off: how is this not a full-blown Star Wars film? It leads directly, seamlessly in A New Hope! What's with the "a Star Wars story" crap? Gimme an opening scroll and John Williams music.

Second: stop trying to explain the plot holes of the earlier films away. You'll just create new ones. And they are all the more obvious because you acknowledged the old ones and basically emphasised them, rather than shrug them off and embrace the fact that you're just making space opera popcorn fodder. And boy, are there some gaping plot holes in this one!

Third: Darth Vader is Sauron (or more accurately: the Nazgûl King of Angmar. Admit it: you were going to school me on this like the nerd that you are) now and he lives in Minas Morgul? I understand that the Lord of the Rings films were hugely popular and that science fiction is often lumped in with fantasy, perhaps somewhat justifiably so for the space opera genre. But the Star Wars universe can stand on its own, you don't need to shop so obviously in other franchises.

OK, those are the big ones. The ones that jumped out at me as I was watching it.

I liked the premise of the film, in several wazs: expand the Star Wars universe.

Okay, so I liked the attempt at expanding the Star Wars universe. Even though it seems vast, on closer inspection, the Star Wars cinematic universe is tiny, and that needs to be fixed if we are to have a Star Wars film every Christmas until forever. Really, what is there? The Force, Darth Vader and the Skywalker dynasty, stormtroopers, Death Stars and X-Wings, AT-AT's and the Millenium Falcon.

This film hit all of those marks, while it could have easily left a few of them out. Too much fan service. They could have simply mentioned Leia, rather than showing that CGI mockery of Carry Fisher. Give the plans to Jimmy Smits and have him send them off with his stepdaughter in his personal cruiser (then kill him, too).

Same with Tarkin. Peter Cushing's dead, give him a smaller role in this story. Paint him as this super-menacing rising star in the Empire's (para-)military, but don't give his uncanny CGI rendering so much screen time.

Killing off the main cast was a bold move, and one that I applaud. It drives home the gravity of the Rebellion's struggle nicely, although it does nothing to expand the cast of characters to build further stories on. We're still stuck with the Skywalkers and hardly anyone else who matters to the bigger story of this universe.

What I really, really liked, was the WW2 vibe this story had. In that regard, it could have benefitted from taking even more cues from the likes of Saving Private Ryan, The Dirty Dozen and that sort of thing. A little more character development (and fewer actual characters in their rag-tag band of outcasts) would have helped, and a departure from the whole "chosen one" narrative that plagues Star Wars as a whole to a more down-to-earth reason for these people to go on this mission would have been refreshing. In that sense, I felt more connected to the Rebels that volunteered in the end than for the main character lady. The composition of the team could have benefitted from more of an Ocean's Twelve inspiration. "We need an ace sniper, a master burglar, a master of disguise, a computer hacker, a daring pilot, …" You know the drill. Where do you find these people? Well, in the most wretched hives of scum and villainy of the galaxy far, far away, of course!

Showing that the Empire is not a monolithically evil organization made up entirely of zealots was also a good move. A missed opportunity was where they could have had their "I am Spartacus" scene with the scientists. Where they would all say they were the ones who had made transmissions to the Rebels. Would have been even better if the story had hinted that they had indeed all been leaking to the opposition; they're scientists who have been drafted and forced to work on a doomsday machine against their will. Of course they are going to have doubts about the fruits of their labour.

The flaw in the Death Star. Hoo-boy. This is a big one. A favourite plot hole among Star Wars parodists, so they tried to plug it. Only to replace it with an even bigger plot hole. He deliberately put that exhaust port in? Alone? And nobody noticed? And then they killed him, discovered the weakness through some rather destructive field tests and then proceeded to build a similar one into the next two versions? Sorry: no. No, no, no, NO! This would have meshed nicely with what I said about the scientists, if they made it clear that the plans were given to the Rebellion, with the express instructions from the designerS (plural!) to look for the exhaust port. It's there, it needs to be there, but you really need to know where to look. They know. And they spill the beans. In collusion. "We're building something awful. If you Rebels can get their hands on the blue prints, we can tell you where to focus your attention." That sort of thing.

On to minor points.

Tarkin is a Grand Moff, or maybe he was just a regular Moff at this time. He is not a governor. He is military, probably paramilitary (nice SS-analogy, there), since the stormtroopers seem to use regular military ranks while I have never heard of a Moff (Grand or otherwise) in any terrestrian military. Yeah, come to think of it: he must be paramilitary to parallel the takeover of the bureaucracy of the Republic by the Empirial paramilitary and the takeover of German society by the SS and the Gestapo.

You don't send AT-AT's to defend your own base. They are transports, even if they are heavily armoured. And they are impressively destructive. Which is kind of not what you want around such an important place. Fan service, whereas AT-ST's might have done a better job, or a missed opportunity to add more merchandisable Empirial weaponry to the franchise. Those archives were doomed the minute the Empire started trying to protect them.

Which leads to the following: How does Tarkin ever rise in the ranks of the Empire after blowing up the archives? It didn't even stop the Rebellion from doing what they came there to do. "You did what?! And they still got the plans to our super weapon?! You have failed me for the last time. Quite spectacularly, I might add. Force choke!"

All that said, I liked it. I ate my popcorn and drank my pop and was thouroughly entertained.

I like your ideas and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. I don't mind the exhaust port. I don't think about it either. I object to the data transfer rates through the shield. la de da. Who gives a shit about wireless bandwidth, and if the dataset is truly that large, analysis is going to take forever. It could have been better sold with less technical explanation. Like that tower's transmitter is hard-wired into the shield so the shield needs to be down. Or something.

I love the Spartacus idea. That would have been really great.

And I agree that Vader would probably have been flying on some ship and not pouting in his lava castle. That was dumb.

bedstuy Wrote:mocking a pair of $500 jeans is a form of class warfare... why do you hate my social status?

(01-11-2017, 09:56 PM)roo Wrote: I object to the data transfer rates through the shield. la de da. Who gives a shit about wireless bandwidth, and if the dataset is truly that large, analysis is going to take forever. It could have been better sold with less technical explanation. Like that tower's transmitter is hard-wired into the shield so the shield needs to be down. Or something.

Good point. Plight of the Rebellion: my ass! Their technology apparently outshines the Empire's by a long shot, since the baddies needed a 1980's style full height 5.25" hard drive to store the Death Star plans, while Jimmy Smits put all of that on the Galaxy Far Far Away equivalent of a MultiMediaCard!

Though I thought the fat hard drive played nicely with the original movie referring to stolen data tapes. And with it being an archive I could believe that there's more than just the Death Star plans on that drive.

I could have done with a little less fan service. I was ok with Tarkin, though I agree with the Nederlander that there should have been less of him. I cried a little at R2 and 3PO. They should have left Leia completely out of it.

This is all post movie analysis. I liked it. A lot. The only time during the movie where I scoffed was when the Hammerhead could ram the Star Destroyer and not break yet the one Star Destroyer cut through the other like butter.

I wanna see it again. My bladder started bugging me 2/3 the way through so I didn't get to completely marvel in the final battle.

About Peter Cushing: I learned that they based the CGI off of footage from the original movie. But they had a snag. Cushing hated the boots so much he instead pranced around in slippers for the entire shoot. So they had no full length footage of him. So in Rogue One you don't ever see a full body Tarkin shot.